Jack the Ripper (7 page)

So what became of Lucy Baderski and her daughter Cecilia Klosowski?

Around 1898, Lucy met a fellow Pole, a cabinet maker, and together they had a son in 1899. They were living in Limehouse. They married in June 1903, two months after Chapman was hung, and went on to have four more children. By 1911 the family had moved to Poplar.
44

Cecilia married in 1908. She was seventeen; her husband being fourteen years her senior. Their marriage certificate shows that she was living in Poplar at the time of her union and that her husband came from Whitechapel. They had five children together, moving after the birth of the second child from Whitechapel to West Ham.
45

  
1.
  Adam, H. L.,
Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
(William Hodge & Co., 1930), pp.219 –223

  
2.
  
ibid.
,
p.63

  
3.
  ibid.
, p.64

  
4.
  Marriage certificate

  
5.
  Birth & Death certificates

  
6.
  Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
, p.65

  
7.
  Birth certificate

  
8.
  Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
, p.65

  
9.
  Birth certificate

10.
 Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
, p.101

11.
 ibid.,
p.203

12.
 ibid.
,
p.
123

13.
 ibid.,
p.203

14.
 ibid.
,
p.205

15.
 ibid.
, p.207

16.
 ibid.
, p.211

17.
 ibid.
, pp.133–34

18.
 ibid.
, pp.140–43

19.
 ibid.
, p.72

20.
 ibid.
, pp.98–100

21.
 ibid.
, p.170

22.
 ibid.
, p.189

23.
 ibid.
, p.104

24.
 ibid.
, p.73

25.
 ibid.
, p.82

26.
 ibid.
, pp.102–3

27.
 ibid.
, p.91

28.
 ibid.
, p.107

29.
 ibid.
, p.146

30.
 ibid.
, p.148

31.
 ibid.
, p.198

32.
 ibid.
, p.57

33.
 ibid.
, pp.68-71

34.
 ibid.
, p.59

35.
 ibid.
, p.33–4

36.
 ibid.
, pp.91–6

37.
 ibid.
, pp.152–64

38.
 ibid.
, p.164

39.
 ibid.
, p.63

40.
 
Birth certificate

41.
 Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
, p.65

42.
 
Birth certificate

43.
 Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series)
, p.65

44.
 
Birth certificate; Marriage certificate; Census

45.
 ibid.

Adam, H. L.,
Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series),
(William Hodge & Co., 1930)

In February 1894, an article appeared in a British newspaper claiming to be an exposé on the real identity of a murderer who had been known to the world as Jack the Ripper. These articles, produced in The
Sun
newspaper, would be serialised for a number of issues.

They generated great interest and aroused the suspicions of the police, who realised that the arrest of this suspect, in 1891, could have had more to it, which might, in turn, make it worthwhile following up on The
Sun
’s investigation. The suspect in question was Thomas Hayne Cutbush. He had been arrested for assaulting a female victim and attempting to assault another by violent attacks with a knife, which he had purchased in Houndsditch. The case resulted in his apprehension and permanent detention in Broadmoor, in 1891.

There was serious concern that the then Home Secretary, the future Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, would be bombarded with questions in Parliament as a result of The
Sun’s
articles. In 1894, it eventually fell to the Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police, Melville Macnaghten, to compile a memorandum to provide the Home Secretary with more essential information about both the Cutbush and the Jack the Ripper cases.

Melville Macnaghten appeared to consult a number of documents – albeit casually in some cases – and, possibly, used remembered details from previous readings or briefings before referring to the original case notes on the Cutbush case in compiling his memoranda in 1894. It must be stressed that this document was private, and the information was only meant to be used, if the Home Secretary needed to fall back on it to satisfy Parliament of The
Sun’s
allegations being unfounded.

An interesting, and indeed vital, aspect of Macnaghten’s Memoranda was that he looked at a number of suspects who had been in the minds of the higher echelons of the Metropolitan Police during, or after, the Whitechapel Murders investigation. Macnaghten’s aim was to prove, to the Home Secretary, that there were better Jack the Ripper suspects than Thomas Cutbush.

‘I may mention the cases of three men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders…’ So began a pivotal sentence in one of the draft documents that made up part of Macnaghten’s Memoranda. Macnaghten would go on to name his three most likely suspects who were better placed, in his mind at least, to be the Whitechapel murderer. His second and third suspects were men who were, at one time, on the police files, as there had been some serious investigations carried out upon them.

One of the suspects, Michael Ostrog, was a highly disreputable character. He was originally from the Russian Empire and was known to assume a wide variety of aliases in the commission of his, often, outlandish crimes. The other suspect was a local man called Kosminski, who had been detained in a lunatic asylum some years after the murders, but had fallen under some suspicion from the police in the immediate period following the murders. The main suspect on Macnaghten’s list – a suspect that he would favour as being the best candidate for being Jack the Ripper – was a man called Montague John Druitt.

Macnaghten, in one of the two existing versions of the memoranda (there was some evidence that a third version existed), said of Druitt:

Mr M.J. Druitt a doctor of about forty-one years of age and of fairly good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court Murder, and whose body was found floating in the Thames on 31st Dec: i.e. 7 weeks after the said murder. The body was said to have been in the water for a month, or more – on it was found a season ticket between Blackheath & London. From private information I have little doubt but that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane.

Interesting reading; Macnaghten obviously saw the suspicion against Druitt as pretty powerful, to the point of making Druitt his prime suspect.

What do we make of Macnaghten’s suspicion of Montague John Druitt? It is interesting that Macnaghten refers to ‘private information’ which threw this suspect’s name within the sweep of his suspicion. Macnaghten also talks of the family’s suspicion against Druitt, claiming they thought he was Jack the Ripper. This would suggest that Macnaghten may have received this information from the family of Druitt. Certainly – and this is a continuing matter of conjecture – Macnaghten’s view that Druitt was a primary suspect is at odds with the opinions of the rest of the police hierarchy who were, in many cases, better placed than he was to assign suspicion on this suspect or that. Some did this, as with the official head of the investigation, Dr Robert Anderson, who was the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police force in 1888. He went for Kosminski, another suspect mentioned in Macnaghten’s Memoranda. Other police officials engaged in the case, such as Inspector Abberline, would refute any suspicion against Druitt. Druitt seems to have been introduced by Macnaghten alone, as there really was no consensus among the police, in 1888, as to who the Whitechapel murderer might have been.

The ‘private information’ Macnaghten refers to and the fact that ‘his [Druitt’s] own family suspected’ that he could have been Jack the Ripper, implies that Druitt’s family made this information known to Macnaghten themselves, or through a third party. Remember, the details of the Macnaghten’s Memoranda were strictly private and never meant for public consumption. There is some evidence to show that the Druitt family had links to a set of families known as the Elton and Mayo families, respectively. They would maintain strong links, even after many of them had emigrated to Australia in the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note that the private secretary to the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, in 1888 – during the Whitechapel Murders – was Walter Ernest Boultbee. Boultbee was married to Ellen Baker, a niece of Alfred Mayo, who was himself related to Montague John Druitt’s father, Thomas. Also, Macnaghten’s father seems to have had some dealings with the Druitt family at some official (and possibly private) level. This could possibly explain Macnaghten’s ‘private information’, and how he came by it.

When looking closely at what Macnaghten says about his prime suspect Druitt, we can see he gets a number of key things incorrect. Macnaghten’s Memoranda is strewn with unintentional errors; they are minor in most instances, but it makes one feel that he was compiling the information largely from memory or remembrances of briefings and documents he may have consulted a good deal of time before. It is of interest to note that when writing his memoirs
Days of My Years
, in 1913, Macnaghten ruefully yielded to the reliance on memory and recollections rather than consult detailed notes. Errors pertaining to Druitt’s age and profession are among the most obvious. Druitt was thirty-one years old, not forty-one. He was a barrister and school master not a doctor. One would expect – it would not be too difficult to concede – that if Macnaghten had been consulting a document detailing certain suspicions on Druitt contained in the police or Home Office files, he might have recorded these fundamentals accurately. Reaching into the penumbra of his mind, Macnaghten may even have got Druitt’s first name wrong on another variant version of this memorandum, referring to him as Michael. This does not necessarily preclude the existence of a police file on Druitt, but the specific language used by Macnaghten to describe the suspects Kosminski and Ostrog was more typical of a police report. We know that both these suspects were under some kind of police suspicion during the wider Whitechapel Murders investigation. Intriguingly, Macnaghten has a more accurate grasp on the details surrounding Druitt’s suicide, referring to possessions found on Druitt’s body: ‘season ticket between Blackheath & London.’

Interestingly, Macnaghten refers to Druitt as having been ‘sexually insane’. This is a rather peculiar pronouncement because it would appear to account, at first glance, for Druitt’s suspicion of being the Whitechapel murderer. However, often the term ‘sexually insane’, when used in its late Victorian context, intimated that someone was believed to be a ‘sexual deviant’ or homosexual. This was the period following the passing of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which enshrined the illegality of sexual acts between males, making it a criminal act punishable with a custodial sentence.

Another indictment of Druitt’s alleged mental state, following his death, was the Coroner’s jury finding his death to be a result of ‘suicide whilst of unsound mind’. Suicide, although more sympathetically viewed by the late Victorians, was still outlawed and maintained some of the old stigma it had in previous generations. Overwhelmingly, suicide could be seen as an act of madness at one end of the scale, or desperation at the other, but was still labelled ‘unsound mind’.

The Coroner’s inquest also dug deeper into Druitt’s circumstances prior to his death. He had been a schoolmaster at Mr George Valentine’s school, in Blackheath, from 1880. It transpired that he had been dismissed by Valentine on 30 November, shortly before his suicide, for getting into ‘serious trouble’ at the school. Again, the full nature of this serious trouble has been open to conjecture; however, many feel it could possibly have involved unsuitable conduct against one of the pupils there. The school itself was an all-male establishment, which was a sort of finishing school for older boys preparing for university and the army – basically, the Victorian elite. This is an obvious conclusion to make, but there is nothing to back it up. Merely coupling it with Macnaghten’s term, ‘sexual insanity’ does not necessarily apply to his dismissal, but it may be more relevant to Druitt’s perceived guilt of being a sexual serial murderer of women.

So, it is to Macnaghten’s accusation of guilt towards Druitt that we must look. The ‘private information’ is mentioned in the same sentence as the family’s belief that Druitt was the Ripper. We can only wonder at what this might be and accept speculations, as I have done previously. A powerful reason for suspecting Druitt was the timing of his suicide, in late November/early December 1888; perfect for the traditionally accepted – but not universally so – final murder in the Ripper series; that of Mary Kelly in early November. Macnaghten would highlight this point in another part of his memoranda, when he theorised that ‘…the ripper (sic) brain gave way altogether after his glut in Miller’s Court and that he then committed suicide.’ Elsewhere Macnaghten would go on to add, ‘…the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become.’